The Huntress: full-length sexy romantic suspense by Dorothy McFalls Page A

his partner, Guy Pollock, got their brokerage mixed up with some illegal money from a Finn Kayne. You know anything about him?”
    Ford’s pen popped right out of his mouth. “No wonder that poor bastard lost his mind. You should’ve let him blow himself up. You said he wanted to take Kayne along with him? You would’ve done everyone a favor if he had.”
    “This Kayne some new heavy hitter in town?”
    “Best we can tell, which ain’t much. He’s not in charge by any means. A regional distributor, perhaps? All we know is that eighty percent of the drugs on our streets are now flowing from him.”
    Vega remembered that piece of paper that had fallen out of Lionel Wahl’s pocket. It had a phone number and the name “Finn” scribbled on it. And Monroe, her street contact, was complaining about some new guy’s high prices and had warned her to keep away from Brian Wright. Finn Kayne and whoever he represented apparently had tentacles reaching everywhere in the city—even into the glossy Grosse Pointe.
    “I’ll pass your information on to the feds. They’re panting down our necks, nervous about Kayne. No one has a clue who’s his boss, but the feds say a man like him has cropped up in just about every major city within the past several months. Every major city. Makes my skin crawl just thinking about it.”
    “Glad it’s none of my business then.”
    None of her business or not, on the way home Vega called Snitch and asked her to dredge up whatever she could on Kayne from her electronic snoops. Perhaps she was just feeling overly sentimental, but she just couldn’t leave Brian Wright out to hang like that. He might not have been perfect or the poster boy for innocence. But who was? Her gut nagged her. Brian was a tiny piece of a much bigger puzzle—a hapless victim in desperate need of help. And if that was true, who else was being destroyed by this new wave of organized crime?

Chapter Nine
    “If I can take out a security guard, I can use his keycard to get into the building,” Grayson said. He was sitting at a small blue linoleum-topped kitchen table with Matt Lockler, the fourth man in the ISA team Grayson had led in Colombia, and feeling pretty damn antsy.
    Matt stubbed out a cigarette and lit another. He looked decades older than the rest of them. His face was a maze of wrinkles and his thinning hair the color of dried hay. “Let me come along. Been a while since I’ve killed a guard.”
    Grayson winced. Matt lived in Atlanta on the edge of society. He too was on the run from the law, which made this hovel of an apartment a logical place to hole up for a few days. The years Grayson and Greg spent putting themselves through graduate school Matt had spent institutionalized. The stress of the ISA had snapped his mind, or perhaps it only nudged him to where he’d eventually end up anyhow. Either way, Grayson found it ironic how such dissimilar circumstances, colleges and mental hospitals, had led to the same awful apartment.
    Matt wouldn’t say why the police were after him, but to hear him talk, Grayson could only assume he’d done something horrible.
    “No—no thanks.” Grayson pushed back from the table. Matt worried the hell out of him. “I’ve got it covered.”
    A cop car drove past on its regular patrol. When it slowed to make the turn around the corner, Matt dove under the table. Convinced the police were circling the neighborhood searching for him, Matt always dove under the table at the sight of their patrol. Grayson bent down and stared at him huddled under there, puffing nervously on his cigarette. “I’ll bring dinner back with me,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say. He wanted to help his friend, but damn, this guy needed a professional.
    “Kill the guard real dead for me,” Matt said when Grayson made a move toward the door, “and pick up Chinese food.”
    * * * *
    Grayson drove Matt’s puttering Geo Metro into downtown, parking on Peachtree several blocks away